Sleeper of the Week: Septerra Core (PC)
Here’s a game I think everyone missed for this week. Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator for the PC is an awesome little game that snuck onto shelves back around 1999. Published by Interplay and made by Valkyrie Studios, Septerra Core is a rather polished real-time RPG that was never ported to any other platform. In fact, even when it was released, Septerra Core was virtually ignored by well…everyone. PC RPGs have always had a cult following, games like Ultima being the exception rather than the rule. Just as Fallout was missed by many and loved by diehards, Septerra Core escaped the notice of console gamers everywhere.
So what is it you ask? Well, Septerra Core is the story of a strange world consisting of seven distinct “shells”. Each shell rotates around a central core. Imagine if you will that inside the earth’s crust there was another set of continents, and between them, there was nothing but empty air. And below that next set is another and so on, all the way to the core. That’s what Septerra Core is like. Each level of the planet is settled by a different class of people. As the game starts out, you play Maya, a girl from Shell 2, which is a destitute lower class shell that lives off the scraps that fall from above from the other shells. The entire game is done in spoken dialogue, a rarity at the time, and the story is extremely elaborate. As the game progresses, you gain a party just like a console RPG and begin your adventure from Shell to Shell across the world of Septerra Core.
The battle system is kind of neat, and vaguely reminiscent of the attack bars from Final Fantasy III (VI for purists) for the SNES. Your characters and the enemies both charge power and once it reaches a certain point, can perform an attack. If you let your power continue to build though, you can also do stronger attacks, which are often the only way to seriously damage opponents. Both your characters and the enemies use guns as well as melee weapons, and conveniently, the guns are semi-organic and grow bullets, eliminating the need to purchase them. Handy, huh? Different weapons are more effective against certain enemies, as you might expect, and many of the other standards of RPGs hold as well, such as equipment menus, experience, and magic points, called “Core Energy”. Battling is very well streamlined and easy to pick up, and characters will abruptly jump directly into battles right from a story screen, with almost no load time.
Exploring towns is also pretty standard. Talking to townsfolk and other NPCs (non-player characters for those of you who don’t know) advances the storyline. If you use different characters to talk to people, most of them have different things to say as well. Often, people will only say important things to the right character, so pay attention! Ultimately, this is a great sci-fi RPG epic that virtually everyone missed. A genre that’s been very much ignored, the sci-fi RPG is very well done here by Valkyrie Studios, and sadly, never really got the attention it deserved. This is a game that honestly could have been the next Phantasy Star series if anyone had bothered to notice it, as it just oozes personality. Sadly it slipped almost directly into obscurity. I personally bought it when it came out, but I’ve only seen a handful of used copies in the wild ever. On eBay, you can buy a brand new copy of the game for about $3 + shipping. Be aware that there were two printings of the game, a big box version when it first came out, and a twin-pack bargain version that was double-packed with Shogo Mobile Armor Division and sold for $10. Most of the ones on eBay are the double-pack bargain version, but hey, the game still kicks ass. For under $5 + shipping, if you have a PC, go check it out!
Just so you know, I included pictures of the covers of both versions. That’s why there’s two cover pics!
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Gapporin
I might even have a spare copy of Shogo lying around...bought a stack of em brand new for $.25 each a while back...
